It is a strange thing when we come to analyze the various social evils which demand our attention, and which every true man longs to cure, to find how great a proportion can be traced back to the one great evil of faulty competition. As a preliminary to a survey of these evils, in order that we may understand the necessity that all good men and true should exert themselves in applying the remedy, let us see just what conditions of our industrial society we should seek to work toward. What is the theoretical perfection of human industry?
Probably all thinking men, whatever their belief and practice, will acquiesce in the proposition that the end we should aim to secure is "the largest good to the greatest number." As we are discussing here only economic questions, this means that the end to be sought is that the largest number of people should have secured to them the greatest possible amount of the necessaries and comforts of life; or, more simply, that the total of human happiness to be derived from the world's production of wealth should be the greatest possible. Now for our present purpose we may assume that since all men desire wealth, the greater its production, the greater will be the number of human desires gratified. From this it follows that our social organization should be such as to increase to the greatest possible degree the world's stock of wealth.
There is no easier or safer way of studying questions of economics than to consider the community as a unit, and see what is for the interest of the people as a whole; what conduces most to the "common wealth"; and